so how much does ham radio cost now this is a broad subject this is actually um at the beginning
of the foundation book but i mean you don't have to be studying for foundation to understand
how much ham radio costs there's materials and information and it goes on about the cost of
equipment so this is technically part two of the foundation license but i've got my own opinions on
this i think that's important to have an opinion all right so uh where do we start okay so if you
are in if you live on a fairly high point you know 1000 feet or just above the rest of your terrain
you'd be lucky you might be able to get away with a little handheld
radio my personal experience i have literally seven or eight handheld radios
the only time i ever use them as if someone's on the farm you know another amateur and i'm
doing something you know in the antenna field and they're in the shack and it saves me making
a phone call frankly the rest of the time i have found a complete and utter waste of time
the only time that a handheld radio can be of any benefit is when you're up on a high point
and it's a weekend when people have actually got their sets on all right then you will hear and be
able to communicate and do a bit more traffic then one other thing you might be able to do
is use a repeater okay so now you can go on if you just just do a google search for
repeater lists in your area so if you're in the us do a repeater list near i know
new york or something but fundamentally how that works is that gen in general terms
there's a hill and there's going to be a tower here with some other contraptions and baloney
on it and the repeater keeper or a bunch of guys and gals got together and decided to put a little
antenna on top and they probably paid some money to do that and they've got a feed and that sort
of thing and you you're down here with your little walkie-talkie thing and and it picks it up there
and it rebroadcasts everywhere and you can get amazing coverage that way so if you have got
a repeater locally you might find a handheld can come in handy i don't want to labor the point but
i just don't want what to say to you don't over uh what's the word don't un well overestimate
some people think oh i've got walkie-talkie talk around the world you're not going to be able to
and it might be a great disappointment okay you can spend 20 or 30 pounds or dollars and get a
cheap thing just to have a play and and then make your mind up but anyway so let's put a line under
the walkie-talkie thing there's plenty of people on youtube that do videos about walkie-talkies and
stuff so what do we really need then okay so you might have heard an expression called shack in a
box and that's basically a radio with a big knob on the front we call that the vfo and a display
and lots of buttons okay and fundamentally that will do everything it's called a shack
in a box it literally does everything so on the one hand we've got normally from
1.8 megahertz which is what we call top band or 160 meter band up to most hf radios now i'll stand
by for the check of the box in a minute we'll go up to either the 10 meter band 28 to 29 megahertz
or 50 megahertz what they call the six meter band so he goes to 10 uh i better write
i'm using frequencies here uh from 1.8 to 28 or 50-ish megahertz that's hf
and then vhf a shack in a box we'll also add on to that somewhere around 145 megahertz
depending what country in the world us goes up to 140 647 we we stop at 145 unless we've got
something called a notice of variation and we've got the 70 centimeters band which is
on or about 433 megahertz so a shack in a box will do all that relatively well okay so my first
shack in the box i think was something called the ts 2000 it operated very well good enough
under contest conditions i found some foibles about it but that was a shack in a box excuse me
so just stand by now right so the other thing we can do is i'll go blue is instead of buying a big
big thing you can buy a mobile what they call a mobile radio it's very it's a bit smaller okay
and it might not have a knob on it it might just have buttons but it will have a display
and in the main that will be doing normally and most mobile radios will do the two meter band
and or the 70 centimeter band so that's around at about 145 and 430 ish depending which part
of the world you're in and they're good fun that means you can plug that into your car
but then on top of your car as a i'm not very good at drawing cars i'm sure uh but on top of your car
you'll normally need a little antenna to plug that into and i'll just do all the costs in a minute
right so if we bought a shack in the box now or an hf radio so something along these lines here
what else are we going to need so we've got our radio and which i'll just write radio
and we're going to need a power supply we can't plug it straight into the mains most hf radios
apart from the really huge things plug straight in the wall will need a little power supply what we
call a psu psu power supply unit so that plugs into the mains all right and then we've got um
12 volt 13.8 volts which will fire up the radio so we need a power supply so let's just imagine we've
either gone down a shack in a box or we're going down that's this one here or we're going down
an hf radio shortwave okay doesn't matter the same thing applies here however pick a different color
once we've got that we need an antenna so if it is a a shack in the box it doesn't really matter
let's just go hf for our shortwave we're going to need a piece of coax out to our backyard or
our back garden or whatever with an antenna at the end of it which i'll come to in a minute
same with your two meter thing because you could have a mobile radio next to this all
right dedicated to 2 and 17. that can be quite an economical way of doing things
so you can buy a fairly old maybe with a warranty on it radio here and get yourself a fairly nice 2
meter vhf ua uhf rig for this we call it a rig it's a radio however that's going to need coax
as well and that's going to need its dedicated antenna because if you remember
amit amateur radio or the whole hf spectrum is a little bit about a little bit like a the whole hf
spectrum it's a little bit like a grand piano so each each string on a grand piano is a different
length it's got a different note okay so if we're playing a note all right we're on the 40 meter
band which is on or seven megahertz plus so we've got seven megahertz uh small m actually is it uh
mega hertz big m i was right seven megahertz we will need a particular antenna which will tune
to that that band which is going to be completely different to our vhf antenna
now if you talk to a dealer about this but invest if you're going down the 2 meter 77s route
then you need to invest some serious money in your coax otherwise you'll be into terrible losses
okay really generalize it so i'm giving you the picture so far so let me let me put some prices
on stuff so i'm on the martin lynch site at the moment which is hamradio.com and i i just selected
yaesu it could have been kenwood it could have been icon it could have been anybody but let's
just for the hell of it i mean i'm not yay soo man i'm not being paid by martinez to do this
i'm just having a bit of fun okay and i think it might be in price order i don't know no it's not
so there's a little ft 840 here for 375 pounds there's an ft 920 that was actually quite a
good radio in this day i seem to remember um over there um a 950 you know and at the end of the day
you can see what the prices are we're starting off at 375 pounds here that's probably over 20
years old by the way but it doesn't matter it was probably still work of course it still worked
you're buying it off a dealer i think it's a great price actually for you know your first little
radio so let's put some prices okay and we'll just mark them down a mobile rig
what are we going to expect you to pay we've got an hf radio and we've got a shack in the box radio
we'll need some coax and connectors a power supply and other odds and ends now i've got to say
i was down getting a take away from the restaurant at the bottom of the road and i met a really keen
fisherman he was very very keen fisherman and i said to him it's interesting i said because
i made a video the other day where i compared amateur radio what i do with fishing right and um
summer's after me and i said to him that my gut feeling is that to get into my hobby
in a pleasurable manner where you know you've got the right sort of toys and everything else
is probably a minimum is probably about a thousand pounds may i ask how much it would cost to get
into your hobby you know once you've got your little chair and your umbrella everything and you
you know a fishing rod and a spool and line and boxes and everything else and he scratched his
head for about 30 seconds and you know what i reckon a minimum is about a thousand pounds
i mean he can he probably spends more than that a lot more than that as i do because you know i
started off light and then started investing so roughly what would i say we need to pay for all
this so your mobile radio now i don't know i don't know i just don't know let's have a quick look
mobile radio let's just have a look at a regular amateur radio mobile radio here we go
let's look at your average joe i don't know i'll pick yesu again could be kenwood could be icon
by the way that's fine a nice sort of dual band uh there's a two meter only 80 watts output ft
2 nine eight zero echo so it does one thing very well okay that's probably great for the car if
you've got a license for 80 watts 149 pounds and you go down the second hand market as well so
if you've got a nice two meter rig in the car 80 watts that's lovely so let's um let's make
a note of that that's brand new as well 149. by the way we're going to need a little that
we're getting by the way we're going to need a little antenna right for your car
and i'm guessing we probably need to add 50 pounds okay so into 200 but you could use that
inside right with your little power supply in your house but you've got to invest in the coax right
and we've got coax here hf radio i would suggest if you budgeted around four to five hundred pounds
we'll go low rather than high because we have seen one at 379 400
or we can go down a shack in a box route now that is gonna be more expensive it just is um
amateur radio go down the base station route uh we'll pick yesu again because we're just i'm not
a yay su man i just i know they do a couple of little shack of the boxes which are quite nice
brand new this is uh well they did do him what 991a yeah here we are 991a that does everything
quite well in fact hayden over at uh hamrida dx in tasmania he likes this radio he wished
he'd never got rid of it and it's got a usb port for your sound card so you this would do
everything so i'm not going to write it down but it's shack in a box brand new you're looking
at 1200 pounds probably roughly the same in dollars so i mean i'll i'll write it down here
second hand you get it for less ts2000 is going for about 950. whatever coax all right
the minimum coax i would personally go with would be something like ultraflex 7
and a roll of that is quite expensive
um i thought we could buy i'm sure we i'm sure we can buy 100 meter wheel of that
i'm going to put down 150 for 100 meter reel add on about another 20 or so pounds
for the connector so i've just done a video about putting connectors on this coax
so you're into with the nice four connectors okay one for hf1 for vhf because you know we need
to do that i'll put 175 i'll just put 175 power supply i've got no idea i don't know power supply
i can't believe they want this much money for a power supply to be honest
you need to go second hand for your power supply will last forever
i'm going to put 50 pounds down because i wouldn't pay that that's all
this assumes you already have a little laptop or an old computer knocking around
you don't need something super powerful okay that'll be fine um so we're into 200 600
775. oh okay well i rang we've done that for about 850
which in the us is about a thousand dollars you're going to need something like a v2000 v 2 000
diamond and your antenna 114 pounds for a diamond v2000 beautiful antenna you'll need to you you
can yeah it's a hundred pounds okay and you get ladder out yourself from the pole and some t into
t k brackets and put it up or pay 50 pounds to get a little man round do it
by the way i'm not interested in what hf antenna you're putting out here because i think you should
just do something like a fan dipole or a basic dipole i'm sure i've done videos about that
that's going to cost you 10 pounds and get you on let's say 40 meters and 20 meters to kick the
ball off right and kick you off going enjoy your ham radio hobby and don't spend too much money
and whatever you do don't tell your partner how much you've really spent okay bye for now